Government

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This is my rambling about the philosophy of Goverment. These are ideals. Pragmatically, we are forced to accept a little bit of wrong, and life is more gray than black and white, but ideally we should glance at the ideals to understand how far we are willing to compromise on them. Read this with that balance in mind. This is also from a very American point of view, most Europeans don't understand our Liberty or our Declaration of Independence.


  • Q: What is Goverment?

  • A: It's a reflection of the people, culture, history, and rules to govern.
Government is no more good or evil than the people running things (or the people voting them in). When the culture is fighting for liberty and tolerance: they're good. When they're fighting for oppression and conformity: they're not good. (No matter the rationalizations for that tyranny: injustice, inequality or diversity).


  • A: Primarily: Government is a tool of force.
That is why it exists. It is a way to force people to do what you want, or else people with guns will come to their house and either take away their life, liberty or property. If you doubt that Govt. is about force, stop paying your taxes or break the law, and see how long it takes for the men with Guns to come take your property, freedom, or your life (if you resist). There are many subtleties and differences in when force should be used or not, but Governments boil down to, "Do what we say, or we kill you".


If you distrust others, then you probably think we should use government to micromanage the unwashed hordes and force them to do what is right, in every aspect of their lives (called progressives). Others think we should use force as little as possible and keep Govt. as local as possible, and as the last resort, in order to enable freedom, distribute and delegate power, and to teach responsibility ( called libertarians). I'm pragmatically in the latter camp. That's fundamentally what most political fights are about: do you advocate patience and teaching (libertarianism), or bullying/theft/redistribution and threats of force (stealing someone's life, liberty or property) if they don't comply. Of course there's a time and place for both -- but every law/regulation/tax is where we think we should draw those lines.

🏛️ There are stories about Government stifling or suffocating liberty and opportunity: almost always for the greater good. But if you're getting squashed or stymied by a jack-boot, it may not matter to you what the intentions were.

🏛️ There are stories about Government stifling or suffocating liberty and opportunity: almost always for the greater good. But if you're getting squashed or stymied by a jack-boot, it may not matter to you what the intentions were.

California Gunpocolypse
In 2016, California passed many gun-grabbers dream laws: phased in tyranny over the next couple years. If you want to know why gun advocates have a problem with "reasonable" gun laws, you have to look no further than California, and their legislators versions of "reasonable". Not one of these new laws will help in shooting or mass shootings in any way, or gun safety, they only show raw, naked contempt for gun owners and the second amendment, in ways that will hurt the innocent, waste millions of dollars in legal fights, and eventually lose. But that doesn't slow them down from passing them. And that's why the NRA exists, and informed gun owners have contempt for what sounds reasonable to the uninformed.
Guns: Control or ban?
Some claim, "nobody wants to take your guns, we just want a few 'reasonable' controls on them". But if we pretend that gun control works (by ignoring facts and history), and we assume guns are the problem, then there is no such thing as gun-control: you need gun bans. "Controlling" semi-auto rifles means you have to control semi-auto-pistols... and then revolvers, and pump/lever action, then bolt action guns (which committed one of our worst mass shootings in American history) and the results are, there are no safe guns in the hands of crazies. Thus logic says they're lying, either to us, themselves or both. So I've yet to meet the gun-controller that will be satisfied with X, when that means their neighbors will still have guns.
Concealed Carry in California
California was one of only 10 "May-issue" Conceal and Carry permits states (as opposed to "Shall-Issue"). Which means they can choose to use the "good cause" to set impossible standards that no one other than the politically connected or big police donors, to meet the standards -- thus they violate the intent of the law that is supposed to allow C&C permits (not deny them). Stacked on top of California not having open carry, it means that you have a right to have a gun, you just can't ever take it anywhere in California. And it's been ruled before that such restrictions violate the people's Second Amendment rights. The State's then A.G. (Kamala Harris) doesn't care about victims lives as much as her political career: and she had armed security guards, so that's all that mattered.
Reasonable Gun Laws
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There’s an oft repeated fallacy that “all we want it a few more ‘reasonable’ gun laws” but (insert either the NRA, evil republicans, gun-nuts), won’t be reasonable. So let's talk about "what's reasonable", and explain some of the complexities that the reasonable laws on the books already look like, to understand why some are so hesitant to ask for more. If you want to be reasonable, you first need to be informed, and get the basics right. How can you reason with an ignoramus (well meaning or not)? So the first step to reasonable gun laws, is educating the gun controllers, on what guns are, how they work, and how bad the current laws are.
VoterID and Voter Fraud
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The purpose of this aimless article isn’t to convince people of any particular solution, it is to meander through the facts, eviscerate the fallacies, and give everyone the data to come to their own conclusions about Voter fraud and VoterID. There are a lot of fallacies and noise about voter fraud and whether voterID (requiring ID at voting places would fix it). I’ll list just a few of the many examples of voter fraud, and reasons for concerns below -- yet, there's are a lot of DNC fronts (media outlets) that claim there’s virtually none. Why the discrepancy? Well the reason is that voter fraud overwhelmingly benefits the Democrats (DNC). If you were them, would you want it to stop? Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Examples of Voter Fraud
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There are three common classes of illegal voting: non-citizen (Illegals), proxy (voting for someone else, alive or dead, individually or mass ballot stuffing), duplicate voting (more than one state). All can be mitigated with simple voter roll sanitizing -- but Democrats have historically been against that as well as voter ID... anyone care to guess why? (Hint: the party with the least fraud in their favor is a fan of fixing it).
Voter Suppression
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The knee-jerk anti-voterID response is, “but Voter Suppression”. While voter suppression is real, and infrequently happens on both sides of the aisle -- it's usually done by not having enough polling places in the right areas, not by checking ID. Yet when real voter intimidation comes up by goons in Philadelphia standing outside a polling station with clubs, the Obama admin drops it, because it benefited them. 400M poor people in India can voter with VoterID, and an ID is required to collect unemployment, foodstamps, welfare, medicare, Social Security. But it's "intimidation" to ask to see them at the polling booth.
Written: 1998.03.13